Explaining Israel: The Jewish State, The Middle East, And America

- All right. Welcome everyone. Thanks for coming out on a rainy day. I'm Carl Cannon, Washington Bureau, chief of Real Clear Politics and Real Clear Publishing. Put out this book that we have. If you haven't grabbed one, please grab one on the way out. These are 40 essays by Peter Berkowitz, my friend, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a columnist for Real Clear Politics. He has other things, and it is, it's a long eia mean length title, but it's in the book. So grab the book and you'll, you, you'll, you get all of his handles, even the sponsor of his chair at Stanford. But we're, and we're, we're gonna have a conversation about, about the book, what led to it. So let's, but let's just start, let's start with a title explaining Israel, the Jewish State, the Middle East, and America. There's a couple of CSP span people here tonight, Peter. So I'm gonna ask you a variation of the Brian Lamb question. Brian would say, why did you decide to write this book? Well, I, these book are essays that you already wrote, so why did you decide to write these essays on Israel?

- Yes. Well, thanks, Carl. I'm gonna answer your question, but first I'm gonna say thank you. I'm gonna say thank you to the Hoover team for putting this together. I'm gonna say thank you to Emily Messer, my colleague at Hoover, who worked on all the essays with me. And I wanna say a special thank you, really, to real clear, real clear politics, you know, like everybody, I've got my inclinations and, and opinions and, and judgements, but at least as the, the responses to my essays often demonstrate to me, I don't perfectly align with any one camp. And Carl, and really real clear politics, Tom Bevin, co-founder here, Kathy Warren, especially Carl, has never regarded this not perfectly aligning with any one camp as a glitch, actually, I think sort of as a feature of the column. So thank you very much for that explaining. Israel. Yes. So I've been traveling regularly to Israel now for, for 20 years, three or four times a year. And for almost that entire time, I've been writing columns when I'm there. And often friends will ask me, what are you doing here? And I say, well, I've, I've come to collect views. And that's a lot of what I do. And I've found that there is a lot of misunderstanding about Israel and the United States. And so o often my columns take it as their task of explaining some of the complexities of Israel. But, but also, I'm not neutral on the matter. I'm a strong supporter of Israel. And so for me, explaining Israel is also about explaining why the ways in which Israel is an extraordinary, the ways in which Israel is an app perilous condition, and how America, how the, how Israel fits into also the Middle East, and how Amer, how Israel fits into ought to fit into a responsible US foreign policy. So explains

- Well, Peter

- Election,

- Peter Peter's a a little modest about his own reporting skills that my son-in-law, Kyle is here in the audience, and we're reporters, and there's some other Phil Wegman who covers the White House For me, if you know me, reporter is my highest compliment. John Roush is a great reporter. You, you, yeah. You have opinions. You, you, you, but you build an argument and your opinions are based on the reporting that you do, what you find. And, and that's, I'm, I'm editing these columns until about three or four years ago. And I noticed Peter would turn in columns when he knew I was golfing or at a baseball game. So Kathy would edit them. And I realized he preferred Kathy's editing to mine. I guess she has a lighter pen. I don't know, but you know, yeah, I do know. But these columns, they're well reported and you can't read them. But not, you learn things, you learn things, and all the arguments don't cut the way Peter would want them to cut. But he's honest enough to report those two. Peter, I'm gonna ask you a question. I I, I was reminded as I was going back, these, these essays, by the way, cover the period 2014 to 2024. So 10 years, well, lots happened in Israel in 10 years. And when my first book I wrote was called The Pursuit of Happiness in Times of War, and it was how presidents use the language of the preamble of the declaration to rally Americans in time of war or national crisis. But during, while I'm writing the book, and I interviewed former presidents, Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush, Jerry Ford. And, and, but while this is going on, the United States entered a war. And so I had to go back to these people and these guys. And it's not easy to get them. Do you still feel the, the same way? And Peter, I'm, as I'm reading your, this is happening while you're writing.

- Yes. - So why don't you explain a little difference of the before and the after.

- Happy to do so. So the, the bookie begins in 2014. First essay is from 2014. And 2014 is a, is a moment of peak confidence in Israel. Everything seems to be going right, the economy is booming. The high-tech sector is the envy of the world. In 2014, only two nations in the world had more companies listed on Nasdaq than Israel. Israel was a country of, of under 10 million people. Then the only two countries ahead of it were the United States with 340 million people and the people's Republic of China, with 1.5 billion people, economy is booming. The peace is holding with Jordan to the east, with Egypt to the southwest. Things are mostly quiet on the northern front. There hasn't been any, any missile fire, rocket fire from Hezbollah since, roughly, since the end of the 2006 war. Hamas seems to be mostly quiet according to international polling. The people of Israel are among the happiest people in the world. The birth rate is high, and not only among Ultraorthodox Jewish women, but among secular Israeli women, the highest birth rate in the, in the, in the Western world. So, and a friend of mine even wrote a book at the beginning of publishing, beginning of 2014, I think, called the, the Israeli century. The Israeli century. He

- Got out a little ahead of himself, didn't

- He? He got a little ahead of himself. Yes, yes, yes he did. But there were, it was, problems were visible later in 2014, in the West Bank, in the area, many Israelis called Judean Samaria. Three young men were kidnapped in late, late spring. And they were, they were executed by Hamas in the West Bank. This precipitated seven week war between a seven military operation, which Israel fought in Gaza. All this time, by the way, Hezbollah is increasing the number of rockets and missiles in Southern Lebanon. Already at that time, somewhere between a hundred thousand and 150,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel on its border. In fact, it was the biggest collection of pro projectiles aimed at another country outside of a, outside of a military, a formal national military. Also, its 2014, Iran is still making progress toward the, toward the building of a nuclear weapon. And I should mention as well, it was visible that the strains between the Ashkenazi elite in Israel, Ashkenazi means Jews of European origin and Sep far Jews, the Jews of North African and, and Arab origin. Those tensions were increasing. This was visible in 2014. In 2016, long serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found himself the subject of an, a police investigation for fraud, bribery, and breach of public trust. In 2019, that investigation led to an indictment. The indictment led to a trial that began in 2020. So increasingly, increasingly, tensions were visible. And then in 2023, I'm making the history short. In 2023, Netanyahu, after Israel went through five elections, five elections in three and a half years, Netanyahu returned to power. After having lost the fourth election, winning the fifth election, his government in January, 2023, proposed a very extensive judicial reform. The critics called it regime change. Let's call it, let's call it a ju judicial overhaul. Somewhere in between reform and regime change. In any case, it certainly pre precipitated a massive counter response from a significant segment of the Israeli people. And it was leading to, it was on the edge of a constitutional revolution on October 6th, 2023. And that cons, the, I should say, constitutional crisis, that constitutional crisis was only averted because on October 7th, 2023, under the cover of thousands of rockets, Hamas, jihadists, invaded Southern Israel, slaughtering 1200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. Again, mostly, mostly civilians. And I would say roughly the last, the second, roughly half of the book deals with these two crisis that Israel has been wrestling with since January, 2023. The, the Constitutional crisis and the military crisis.

- Now, I was gonna ask this at the end, because I didn't, you don't like to get you, when you have a nice kicker, you save it for the end of a story. But I, I, I think I'll mention it now. So you have a, this is the first book in what's gonna be a series. The second one is called Reclaiming Liberal Education in America.

- Yes.

- Naren Ariel, who's in the back here, is the publisher for our partner with Real Clear Publishing. He's putting that book out too. But, but I have to tell you, Peter, one of the great greatest surprises of my, as a journalist in, in the greatest surprise of my life has been when, after Israel is attacked,

- Yes.

- On college campuses throughout the west, Western Europe, Canada, but here in the United States, the country I know about people rally not for Israel, but for the terrorist, for Hamas. Was this unexpected in Israel, was it unexpected by you? It, it, it, it still stuns me, even though we're into this for a year and a half. And I, I, you're gonna deal with this. 'cause I've read those essays too in your next book. But let's talk about it in the context of Israel.

- Yes. I I think there may be even an essay or two in this book that deals with it. Yes, it's stunned observers in the United States. That is the immediate outpouring of support for the jihadist massacres of civilians in Israel. It stunned people in the United States. It certainly stunned Israelis. But I, I have to report it did not, it did not catch me by surprise. Not that I would've predicted such a reaction, but that we were witnessing such a reaction. A dismaying, appalling, outrageous reaction was a consequence of what American universities have been teaching for going on a generation. Now, I could go on, as you know, for a long time about this matter, but I, I'll restrict myself to saying this, in the humanities, and to some extent in the social sciences, for more than a generation universities have been teaching among other things that the United States is a, in its essence, a rapacious, colonial, imperialist power, the, a prime source of political instability on the international scene. And that the United States is a kind of, actually to use the jihadist language, which actually overlaps with, with the professor's language is a kind of great Satan. And this great Satan has a puppet, Satan, a little baby Satan in the Middle East, an outpost of settler colonialism in the Middle East, and that's Israel. So simultaneously, many of our students have been indoctrinated in the view that the United States perpetrator of great evils is aided and abed by Israel. So how to explain this paradox that so many of the students immediately instinctively took Hamas' side. Well, they didn't, but, but knew next to nothing about Israel, didn't know which river and, and which sea they wanted to see emancipated. And by the way, for those of you who don't know, that language is directly from Hamas' charter, actually the revised charter of 2017, where they say all the land that from the river to the sea completely and totally belongs to Islam and needs to be reclaimed by Islam. Well, why in their ignorance did they react? Because all because they knew that Israel was in alliance with the United States, and they were giving expression to the anti-Americanism that they had imbibed on campus.

- Alright, so I, I can see that, I can already see your second book is too well-reasoned and mild. I'm gonna, I'm volunteering right here in front of these witnesses to write the preface of your second book, which I call for the termination of every tenured professor of the United States. Would that be, would that get clicks, Tom? Yeah. All right. I I, I jest, but on a serious way. But, but then, then, then that leads me to another question. And this is a question. If you knew this, somebody in Mossad must have known this in the Mossad, somebody, there must have been smart people in, in the Israeli, in the IDF. There must have been people in Bebe's cabinet who knew this. Do you? I wrote, I I I looked it up recently. I wrote a column when this first started, and I said, Israel has a right to defend itself. But, but I hope that Netanyahu doesn't go too far and make himself make the IDF the target may that he, yes, Hamas hides, and you've pointed this out, you point this out in this book in hospitals and schools, they build, you know, they use Palestinian citizens as civilians hoping they'll be killed.

- Yes.

- But that wasn't a secret either. And I guess my question is a big windup, but should, should Netanyahu have known this, that, that, that the propaganda war, that Hamas was ahead, not militarily, you know, Israel's slain, all these, you know, destroyed Iran's air force. It's in all these amazing things. But while losing the propaganda war, should Israel have known that, should Netanya as government have known that? Should he have known it? And should they have taken steps to make sure that they weren't, make it easy for their enemies to criticize them?

- So yes, the Netanya government should have known this. And to some considerable extent, they did know this. Benjamin Netanya, who, who in part grew up in the United States, speaks beautiful English, does understand the American scene. And in fact, before, before the Hamas slaughter, it was, it was well understood in, in Israel that generally best case scenario, Israel has 10 days or two weeks to defend itself against onslaught. And after two weeks, the accusations of crimes against humanity and genocide will start rolling in. So then the next question becomes, okay, what can you do to counter that? Well, there's not that much that is within Israel's power to do. You could say they could have mounted a stronger Israelis called Hez bah Campaign, explanation, campaign, propaganda campaign. Undoubtedly, Israel could have done more there. You could argue that Israel should have from the very beginning, as my Hoover colleague. Now, Jim Mattis recommended, who was totally in support of Israel's operation in Gaza. He said it would be a, he recommended this after about two weeks, it would be a good idea for Israel to sell set up field hospitals on the edge of Gaza to which only women and children would be, would be admitted. Not only would be good for those women and children, it would be good for Israel's reputation in the world. But we have to be clear about this. These students on American campuses, the professors who egged them on the intellectuals in, in Europe, they don't, they didn't really want to be instructed. They have such a poor record of taking seriously the facts that it's hard to imagine. Even an extraordinary campaign by the Israelis to get, to get explanations out there would have, would have changed much. I mean, we see this now in the, the Denunciation of Israel by the International Association of Genocide Scholars.

- Oh, that was gonna be my next question. Please Proceed.

- Which is a subscription association. Anyone can join if you pay, I think it's $125. I'm not sure.

- 30 - Pardon? Maybe it's, maybe it's only 30 bucks. And this, it includes students, by the way, students

- And musicians.

- And musicians. But if you move through the, the accusations, starvation, indiscriminate, killing of civilians, indiscriminate bombing, the evidence goes in the opposite direction on all of these points. And by the way, we should be very clear about this. The, the, the people who live in the Gaza Strip are undergoing and have been going undergoing a terrible humanitarian crisis. They're suffering, but immediately need two things need to be added. One, it seems to me, as a moral matter, and as a legal matter, as a matter of the international laws of war, Hamas is presumptively responsible for the death and the destruction. Why is that? It is a violation of the laws of war. First, when Hamas attacks civilians, its whole war plan was to attack Israeli civilians. It's a violation of the international laws of war to, to operate your mil military inside a city, or by the way, under a city. And certainly in that city's hospitals, mosques, schools, un offices, and more. Those are violation of the international laws of war. Obviously, it should be, obviously, it's a violation of the international laws of war to use your own civilians as human shields. We have, we have letters, we have messages from the, the leader of Hamas, whom the Israelis killed in October, 2024, saying that part of our, part of our tactics is to rack up Palestinian deaths as a result of the Israeli invasion, which will turn the international community against, against Israel. None of this requires deep investigative reporting. And yet the newspapers and the scholars in Europe and the United States have almost systematically avoided grappling with these, with these realities.

- All right, so the word genocide, let's stay with this point a little bit, because how many Arabs in live in Gaza and live in the West Bank, I dunno, compared to 25 years ago?

- Yeah,

- So it's a good, we talked about this on the radio. I'm gonna,

- We did. So, so I'm going to, I'll emphasize the point. The, the charge of genocide against Israel goes back to around the late 1980s. This was the time of the first Ada, an uprising of Palestinians, mostly in the West Bank, Judean, Samaria. It was asserted that Israel was committing genocide in responding to the ada. At that time, approximately 1.5 to 1.8 million Palestinians lived in West Bank, Judean, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip total, almost 40 years later, roughly, I think actually more than 5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Judean, Sumerian, ga altogether. In other words, the population has just about tripled in 40 years. There is no national population in the Western world that has grown more rapidly than the Palestinian population of the West Bank, Judean, Samaria and, and Gaza. That's not the look of, of gen of genocide.

- That's not what the word means. The word came into use after World War ii, when Nazi Germany killed almost all of the Jews in almost all of them in Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Poland, Netherlands, Poland. And, and more than half of them in Western Russia, Italy, Greece. That's genocide. That's saying you wanna wipe out the race. And how do, how do, how is it that people say this with a straight face? Now I'm asking you now about college campuses again, but it's not limited to their, I I i was, I made the mistake of watching two minutes of the Emmys

- And, and the wrong two minutes, apparently.

- Well, do not watch, this is an argument for gun control because I shut out my television sheets. Geez. But you had this actress who I, boy, you know, speaking on behalf of the diaspora, you had this idiot actor I'd never heard of saying, I have to denounce the genocide. And by the way, citing that fake group. Yeah. What's to be done about this? This is a misuse of the word. It's the opposite of it's Orwellian.

- It's, it's, it is Orwellian. It's a misuse of word. And, and it's more than that. Also matter we've discussed before, you take a roughly a hundred year period from, let's say the British Bour Declaration, in which the British government declares, it looks with favor on the creation of a Jewish state in the Palestinian mandate. Up until today, even if you include the roughly let, let's accept the Gaza Health ministry's numbers. For the moment. Around 60,000 people have been killed since, since the October 7th massacres in Gaza. During as Israel exercise, its right to self-defense, let's say around 150,000 Arabs for that a hundred year period have died in wars with the Jews and with Israel, 150,000 total. A lot of people, a hundred years. That's a lot of people. Four times as many people have died in the Syrian Civil War, which broke out in 2011, 600,000 people ask yourselves, how many demonstrations have there been on campus to protest this outrageous amount of death in Syria, in Yemen, since 2014, roughly three or 400,000 people have, have died. Arabs, Muslims, how many protests have there been on American campuses or at the enemies, or for that matter, the wars in Sudan, the killing of Christians in Nigeria? Nothing silence, which makes it difficult to take seriously. The how heartfelt is or the, these supposed humanitarian sympathies of the, of the denounce of Israel. Mind you, this is not, we nevertheless should take seriously. Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe, but it's very important to identify the real cause. The real cause is Hamas, the Jihadists who elected to conduct war from inside cities. The international laws of war are clear about this. A country has the right to, to defend itself. And by the way, I should also add this observation. The worst kind of war for an army to fight. I mean, military people will tell you this. Jim Mattis said this to me, James Mattis at former Secretary of Defense, four Star Marine General. He said early on, he said, you know, he said, oh, he said, this is in the conversation, he told me about the, that the field hospitals that the Israelis should set up early on. He said, so far as he can tell at this point, Israel has made only one mistake, which is they haven't yet drafted him to, to fight on Israel's side. And then he added the somber face. He said, you know, Peter, I love a battle, but there's anywhere I'd rather fight in a desert on an icy mountain slope in a forest anywhere. I'd rather fight than inside a city. And the Israelis are now facing a kind of warfare that we didn't even see in Mosul. And Fallujah, which wasn't nearly the population, was not as densely packed together. And in Mosel and Fallujah in Iraq, the Iraqis had not built hundreds of miles of tunnels. If I'm remembering correctly, that tunnel system in Gazo is more extensive than the New York City subway system.

- Well, there was an old line from my youth when, when the United States was stuck in the quagmire, quagmires, a synonym for Vietnam for those young people

- Of a certain generation. Yes.

- Yeah. You know, let's declare victory and go home. And it was a, it was a cynical quip, but it, there, there was a, there was an, there was a, a thought behind it that winning some wars can't be won, and that you could declare that you'd won a war, and that that would be good enough. The North Vietnamese, the army was never gonna be a threat to anybody in the United States. Is it time for Israel to declare victory and get outta Gaza? If it can't win this war, and it's losing the battle of public opinion, you know, declare victory and go home, it, it, you know, it's reduced. I, I mentioned earlier, Iran's air Force to rubble, it's done all these things around. It's Syria sort of suing for peace. Iraq is no threat. I mean, maybe this is the time.

- There are certainly admirable and impressive voices in the national security establishment in Israel, who, who advocate today time to end the time to end the war. As, as you know, Carl, and most of you know, I'm sure Israel intensified its ground operation in Gaza City today. I do think that in response to your concern about war goals, Netanya who has Prime Minister Netanya, has spoken misleadingly in the past when he has said that Israel's goal is, which means absolute victory.

- Right?

- There will be no such thing as absolute victory in Gaza dealing with what, what was once a military has now been reduced to a terrorist organization. However, Netanyahu has also, I think, more adequately defined Israel's war goals, which are to eliminate Hamas as a military, to eliminate Hamas as a governing power of Gaza and to rescue the hostage hostages. Th three goals, are they all compatible? Well, this is the question over which Israelis continue to agonize. The government's view seems to be that one, it is necessary to, it is necessary to continue the work to destroy Hamas as a fighting force by entering Gaza city and destroying their last stronghold. And the government continues to argue that at this point, the only way to win the release of the hostages is by going to Hamas. Because by taking the war to Hamas, because Hamas will not let go of its last bargaining chip, the remaining something like living, living 20 hostages, another 30 or so deceased hostages, their bodies are still held by Hamas. The counter argument is that the Israel's entrance into, into Gaza city secures the fate, secures the death we'll bring about the death of, of the remaining living hostages. Because as the Israeli forces draw, draw closer, the Hamas Jihadists will, will, will kill them.

- Well, they've done that, that before

- As they've exactly, as they've done in the past, as Israeli forces drew closer. The main thing I think we need to understand is just how agonizing the decision this is for, for the Israel Israelis in the Jewish tradition. Vu, the returning of the hostages is a high, if not supreme value, or at least it is a very high value. And the Israeli population is, is deeply, deeply torn about this. And responsible figures in the national security establishment who oppose Netanyahu, say, we return the hostages, we enter a deal with Hamas, they will break the deal as they always break deals. And when we need to, we can, we can return to the battle. That is not the, that's not the approach that the Prime Minister has adopted as we speak. There's heavy fighting in, in Gaza with the aim, with the pronounced aim, at least, of finishing the work of destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages.

- I have one more question for you, and then we'll open it to

- Okay

- Then conversation here. You, you mentioned absolute victory, which Nya the phrase he uses, and that has a long provenance. You know, in Sherman General Sherman, when it comes to Sherman has said to have waged total war on the South, but that wasn't total war. We found out what total war was in World War ii and a phrase we used in this country, we're gonna, what we're gonna do to Nazi German and Japan. And, and Roosevelt's phrase was, you know, total war means total surrender. And, and we made that unconditional surrender. And so, and that happened, and we just, I'll talk about Japan. So, you know, on an aircraft carrier, you know, they sign a piece that makes them have a democracy like us, they completely remade their whole society. The Sam were neutralized and they became a democracy. That's not gonna happen in Gaza.

- Yes.

- And so I guess my question is, what is the two state solution dead forever? Because what Netanya would like to happen is not going to happen.

- Yes. So,

- So what's the, so what's the answer

- Going forward? So what, what's the answer? Okay, so say the best for last. The answer for probably the answer. What's gonna happen? Emphasize the point. One of the reasons that absolute victory will not be achieved over Hamas is because Israel will not engage in total war. If Israel wanted to destroy the Gaza Strip, the pilots who did it could eat breakfast at home and return in time to eat Bre at dinner at home too, Israel has the firepower to, to level the Gaza strip in a day. Israel won't do that. Israel doesn't do that. Israel doesn't do that because for all of the mistakes and all of the flaws we save the Israeli army, as we say, truly of the American army, it's soldiers, it's officers are educated in the international laws of war. Israel operates inside that framework. Of course, it's wartime, it will emerge if it hasn't already emerged that in specific instances, war crimes were committed because crimes are committed in war. But Israel does not engage in total war. What's the best we can hope for? I wanna repeat some wisdom that was shared with me many years ago by a good friend who teaches military history in Israel. And he said to me long time ago, he said, if we're going to have a serious conversation about Middle East politics, you must internalize three principles. I said, sure, what are they? He said, fir he said, first all options are bad. Second, do not assume that you can identify some one option that's less bad than all the others. And third, unlike the stark logic of politics everywhere else, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. Now go home, sleep on it, internalize it. And once you've internalized those principles, we can have an adult conversation. I need to amend one one of those principles. My friend said, all options are bad today. All options are terrible. All options for Gaza are terrible. So I'm about to,

- You don't like Trump's plan to put, turn it into Vegas.

- I, I should say that all plausible options are, are terrible. All plausible options are terrible. And so before I suggest my, my option, my preferred option, I, I, I do insist that you will not refute my option by pointing out to me that it's terrible. I acknowledge, acknowledge in advance, but I will argue that it's less terrible than anything you can plausibly come up with. So what's the least terrible option for, for Gaza? First, as far as the eye can see, Israel will have to retain overall security control for the Gaza Strip. Second, the Gulf countries are going to have pony up tens of billions of dollars as President Trump did correctly point out back in February, where he suggested that out of his humanitarian concern that he wished to build a Riviera on the Mediterranean, that first it would be necessary to remove tens of thousands of tons of rubble from Gaza. That was true in February. Tens of thousands of tons of rubble have been added since then. So it's gonna cost a lot of money. It's gonna have to come from the Gulf. And Third, Israel working with Gulf countries, other Arab countries in the United States is going to have to find local Arab Muslim leaders in Gaza, maybe from West Bank, Judean Samaria, who take responsibility for civil administration of the Gaza Strip. And these, these Palestinians are going to have, have to have links that are as weak as possible to Hamas and to the Palestinian authority, the corrupt and sclerotic Palestinian authority. I say as weak as possible, because it's defined, it will be impossible to find anybody who has no such links in Gaza and in, in the West Bank. So once again, I can see that this is a terrible option with lots of problems associated with it, but I I do believe it's less terrible than the other options on the table.

- We have time for some questions. We'll start right here. Jeff in the front row, Jonathan Rausch.

- Jonathan Rausch of Brookings. Peter, your writings on Israel have been a touchstone for me now since you've been doing it. And Carl's absolutely right about your talent as a journalist. Thank you for that. Someday this war will end. And before this war, Israel was simultaneously vibrant and coherent, yet also deeply conflicted. Secular versus Orthodox left versus right and so forth. What does the long-term future of that country look like? It appeared on October 6th to be coming a part at the seams.

- Another good and hard question. Thanks, Jonathan. I visited Israel in August. I came back a few weeks ago in June. Israel accomplished extraordinary things militarily in a 12 day operation. They severely degraded Iran's nuclear program. They severely degraded Iran's ballistic collection. They severely degraded Iran's missile production factories. They took out prominent scientists. They took out more than a dozen military leaders. Extraordinary accomplishments today in Israel. It's as if none of that happened. I don't mean the Israelis are not grateful to their extraordinary Air force and the Mossad. I mean that if you had had asked an Israeli in August, just two months after his extraordinary achievements, well, aren't you Boyd by, by the achievements of June, it would be like asking an American, aren't you today? Aren't you just feeling great about the victory over the British in in No, come on, the battle of the bulge ified fine maybe only 80 years ago. Why is this relevant to your question? Because the Israelis are, are, are suffering from the divisions that you have identified, which now in the Israeli context have been re have been reduced to, or they have been consolidated in Bibi only Bibi Lobe, only. Not Bibi Benjamin Netanyahu, the, the nickname that just about everybody in Israel uses describe Netanyahu. So yes, these divisions run very deep and yes, as, as you know well, and I know you've been thinking about this and deeply, that these divisions, these social divisions to some extent mirror the deep divisions within the United States and other western style liberal democracies. So there's a division between the, the highly credentialed, well-educated, prosperous elites who live in the urban centers in Israel and the people who live in, in Israel. They say the perria, the, the periphery. These are magnified by divisions between the, as you say, the religious and the secular sounds

- Like the United States you're talking about.

- Understood, understood. Even more deeply, the, the ultra Orthodox and the rest of the population. Don't forget that 20%, 21% of Israel citizenry is Arab. This is another very significant division within Israel. And the, there, the debate over the role of the Supreme Court in Israel has not gone away. The people who introduced the reforms back in January, 2023, remain eager to, to ram those reforms through. So there is no doubt that one of the greatest challenges that Israel faces today remains restoring political cohesion, restoring a sense in Israel that they, the people of Israel, the tremendous and wonderful variety of people in Israel are engaged in a common enterprise that still needs to be reni together. There was an extraordinary, an extraordinary resilience was, was shown in the days and weeks following the October 7th massacres, remember Israel country of fewer than 10 million people with a standing army of approximately 170,000 within five days of the attacks, Israel mobilized, or I should say the reserves volunteered voluntarily showed up in numbers of roughly 350,000, 350,000 reservists who form a corp part of the army showed up within five days to risk their lives for, for the country. So there remains a deep well of support, a deep well of commitment to a Jewish state in the land of Israel. That is both, that is also, in addition to being a Jewish state, is rights protecting and democratic a deep well. But the tensions are real and deep, and Israel is in desperately in need of political leadership that as I as I've already said, can REIT together this wonderful variety of of people there.

- Tom Bevin had a question here. Jeff was a Wait, wait, wait, wait for the mic please.

- Oh, it was a, it was a similar question about, you know, October 7th being a, a unifying event for Israel and how, how much is that unity holding? How much is it freeing? How much of the, the tension and acrimony and partisanship of politics crept back in

- The tension and the acrimony has, has crept back in It is very strong today. The, the opposition to Netanyahu is, is big. It's intense actually since roughly the, roughly the spring of 2023, that means two years almost all of the polls have very consistently shown that if elections were to be held, Netanyahu would no longer be prime minister. So for two years and during this period crisis, the crisis of the Consti constitution and the, of the regime and then the crisis of the war, the president, the prime minister, has been governing without real majority support, although he commands a majority in the Knesset. So, which makes Israel's Israel's battling even more, even more extraordinary. And while their numbers of the re reservists showing up for reserve duty ha have declined somewhat still reservists are showing up at a remarkable, remarkable rate. By the way, nobody would've predicted that this was so on October 6th, 2023. The older generation in Israel has, has frequently since October 7th expressed its astonishment to the, about the young people showing up the 20 something showing up. And its gratitude to those people who have showed it a considerable burden. But we should make clear, when I say reservists, not reservists like in other countries, the reservist form and essential part of the Israeli military. And many of these men, and some of them some women are 30 somethings who are showing up at considerable cost to their, to their livelihood, to their families, to say nothing to their, their, their, their own limbs and lives.

- We have time, I think for one more question, maybe two if, depending on how succinct Peter is in answering.

- Thank you, thank you very much for this presentation and this discussion. It it, it's really great. So the question that I'm going to ask you is almost a little provocative is what do you think of and what consequences you, you, you see for this recognition of Palestine by some European countries led by France

- In Ireland? Yes. I think this, this represents awful conduct that is counterproductive. It does not advance the interests of the Palestinians. One bit to the contrary, what do I mean? I think the Israelis are right. Prime Minister Netanyahu is right. It looks to all eyes, to Palestinian eyes for sure as a reward for a massacre. What's the message to the Palestinians said, you know, for 30 years since Oslo, you know what your mistake has been. You didn't kill enough innocent civilians. If only you had thought about that earlier, we, we would've persuaded European countries to cognize Palestinian state. Second in, what does this recognition consist? What's going to happen after, after France, Canada, UK you said Ireland other countries.

- Norway.

- Norway. What happens after they formally recognize the existence of a Palestinian state? It is not going to bring into existence a Palestinian state. Not the West Bank. Judean, Samaria, and not in the Gaza Strip. And why is that? Because until Hamas is dealt with adequately in Gaza, Israel will face continue to face an ex existential threat. And by the way, why is it that m Debas has not stood for elections since 2009? When, which is when, hi, the four year term to which he was elected ended partly because he just wants to retain power. But also partly because his party knows that if elections were held, there's a very good chance that Hamas would be elected in, in the West Bank in Judea and Samaria and Israel can't live with that to territory governed by a jihadist organization whose original charter in 1988 and whose revised statement in 2017 both explain that it's their, the reason for being is to destroy the Jewish state. We would not ask this of any other country. It shouldn't be asked of Israel. So have, having said all that, we could use Europeans, we could use Americans who do take seriously the serious suffering of Palestinians and Gazen Judean Samaria, and work with the Israelis to adopt measures that meet two criteria, two criteria. One is any measures must first ensure Israeli security and second, bring about more autonomy, more prosperity for the Palestinians. I acknowledge that that's actually especially right now a narrow overlap. But that's what we should be working, working toward. And there by the way, there are ideas out there. I should me, I'm not being succinct, am I? I'll mention very quickly that there's a wonderful book by a man named Mha Goodman called Catch 67, which lays out some of these measures we should be foking again, focusing again on measures that simultaneously promote what I'm talking about. Judean Samaria promote Palestinian autonomy and prosperity while preserving Israeli security. But Gaza Gaza's different and I've already gone through what I think is the least terrible approach to Gaza.

- Alright, I think I'm gonna wrap up the formal program. Now if you have, the bar is still open. Yeah. And so if you have a question that you were dying to get in, just buttonhole Peter and pull him aside, you know, maybe get a chair, please chair and ask him. And I'm gonna use the moderator's prerogative to ask one final question. Peter, in all of American journalism, who would you say is your favorite editor?

- Well, you know, there are like two or three I really admire, but when I really put my mind to it, you, Carl. Wrong. Wrong. I'm

- Doing my, what was his name? McLaughlin wrong? It's Kathy Warren. Thank you Peter. Thank you.